They Met at Shiloh (2 page)
Even before the guns fell silent around Mexico City, southern politicians were lobbying to create territories that would provide new cotton-producing lands. They were motivated not just by economic doctrine but also by political interest, for the South needed representation in Congress to counter the growing abolitionist influence from northern politicians. More slave states would mean more representation for the southern way of life. Southern politicians cared little that most of the territory gained in the war with Mexico was of little use to the cotton producers.
The land in the first cotton-producing states had begun to play out as early as the 1830s. Landowners were pulling up roots and moving westward as fast as the government evicted the Indians. Even before Texas won its independence, slave holders began trickling into the territory, ignoring their Mexican landlord’s prohibition against slave holding. With slaves came rich and influential men with a taste for the good things that money brought. But for every successful plantation owner and cotton producer came thousands of would-be scions of fortune.
Michael’s father, Finneaus, was one such influence seeker. Michael’s early recollections of childhood were of constant motion as Finneaus moved his family from one place to the next to build his personal fortune. Though not a slave owner himself, Finneaus wanted what, at that time, was the American dream. Immigrating to South Carolina as a boy from Ireland prior to its great potato famine, he quickly entered the struggle to make it in the burrows of Charleston, South Carolina, by the only means he had: his unconquerable desire to rise above his own common birth. By the time Michael was born in 1840, Finneaus had gone from bright-eyed store clerk to would-be tobacco producer to merchant. The journey took the family from Charleston, where Finneaus had married an Irish immigrant named Melissa Iverson, the daughter of an influential family who operated a shipping business with several ships and a dry goods store.
Finneaus made his start working for Melissa’s father as a clerk in the store and eventually made his way onto the bottom rung of Charleston’s genteel society. Armed with a nice dowry and an unquenchable desire to make a fortune, Finneaus and Melissa struck off westward. Then, using his shipping family contacts, Finneaus bought a stake in the tobacco trade. As new arable land opened up in the 1820s in Georgia and Alabama, he was able to purchase land and begin his dream. Melissa gave birth to a son, Andrew, in 1821, then to a daughter, Michelle, in 1822.
Farming tobacco was intensive labor. The plants needed constant vigilance and care. This need for workers gave birth to the slave trade in the early 1700s as indentured servitude gave way to shanghaied Negroes whose labor was both permanent and excessive. Finneaus had the capital neither to buy a slave nor to hire help. After five years of struggle, he decided that he would make his money not by growing tobacco but by selling it. Armed again with money made from selling the farm, he packed up the family, now with four youngsters—Emma born in 1828 and Paul in 1831—and moved westward to Mississippi.
The two parts of the country were striving to meet in the middle, with the founding of St. Louis in 1820, which grew from a remote shipping waypoint on the Missouri River to a booming trade port. Finneaus set up shop along its waterway. Settling in Natchez, Mississippi, he transported interior tobacco downriver to New Orleans, the gateway for water-born transport from the Deep South to the East. By 1839, Natchez would grow to be a city instead of just a merchant port on the last leg of the river journey from St. Louis to New Orleans.
It was here that Melissa bore him two more children, Eunice in 1837 and Katherine in 1838. Eunice, Katherine, and Melissa succumbed to an outbreak of measles in 1838, a not uncommon happenstance. This left Finneaus with Emma and Paul, both in their early teens, and his two eldest sons. As was also common for a man of means or, in Finneaus’s case, a man of would-be means, to take care of the younger children he married Paula Ecklandburg, the daughter of a prominent German merchant family in Natchez. Paula, Michael’s mother, was twenty-two when Finneaus married her, and she would bring him another four children in the years that followed Michael’s birth in 1840.
Keeping his merchant business going in Natchez consumed Finneaus for the next five years, as the trade boomed then busted. Michael remembered his easy-going childhood in Natchez, playing with his younger siblings, Gertrude, born in 1841, Stephen, born in 1843, and Eva, born in 1844. Paula was a doting mother. She chose to raise her own children despite being a woman of means and preferred to spend hours with them rather than enjoying a life of limited luxury. Michael grew up with the odor of the river and the smell of dry goods from the warehouse. Emma, a comely lass of 16 when Michael was born, attended school in Charleston where she stayed with her grandparents, about whom she knew little until Finneaus sent her there in 1840. Paul, thirteen years old in 1844, when he wasn’t in school, looked after Michael as they wandered the wharf and shop areas or when they strayed too far from Paula’s watch. Paul, being the only male child still at home and the closest thing Michael would have to an older brother, was expected to take care of him despite the difference in parentage. Michael’s oldest brother, Andrew, was twenty-three by that time and worked for his father most of the day. Michelle, back from boarding school in St. Louis, helped Paula mind the younger children who were still at home.
Michael had little to occupy his time at the tender age of five, other than exploring with his older brother Paul, playing with Gertie and Stephen, or forcing Michelle to chase him around the neighborhood. His earliest remembrances were of watching the paddle steamers and smaller steam craft moving up and down the Mississippi, spilling forth their loads of goods onto the docks. He watched blacks and poor whites moving bags of beans, piles of tobacco, or rolls of cotton from the ships into wagons or directly into the warehouses. His first contact with slavery was watching the wharf hands laboring under the watchful eyes of the foreman. Even at five, he recognized that they were different from himself. He could come and go as he pleased; they couldn’t. They were marched to the wharf in a gang and marched back at the end of the day. He was too young to dwell on the inequalities of their disposition. Andrew told him they had to work there. He tried to explain slavery to him as best as he understood it.
“Think of it as a punishment. They are being punished for being niggers,” Paul said.
Michael related to punishment. Sometimes Paula or Michelle would rein in his adventures and make him stay at home. Now, as he thought about it, he realized that life for the blacks was much like the life of soldiers.
*****
Michael was far removed from those days of freedom in Natchez. The musty, damp morning gave way to welcome sunshine as breaks in the trees afforded patches of sunlight, allowing him to soak up the heat. The roads were still muddy, and the regular sucking sounds made by horses’ hooves and water-logged brogans on the feet of the infantry added to the sounds of thousands of men on the move.
So far, Tennessee proved most undesirable, as it seemed to Michael to have rained every day for the past two months. If it wasn’t raining, it was oppressing them with the humid heat of early spring. Their tenure in the state was made more difficult by constant retreats and bad news. Since the year before, Confederate fortunes had waned in the west after a promising beginning. Union armies had maneuvered Albert Sidney Johnston’s forces farther south as, one by one, key forts along the Tennessee River fell. Grant’s army had not been idle in the winter months of 1861 and 1862, taking Fort Donelson late in the campaigning season. His army now rested on the banks of the Tennessee River at Pittsburg Landing and at an additional camp five miles downriver at Crump’s Landing and at Savannah, where Grant had his headquarters.
Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston had not been idle either, putting together troops from around the various command departments in the region until he enjoyed a numerical superiority to Grant. Regiments from Arkansas, from Kentucky, from Missouri, and from his own retreating forces from Bowling Green, Kentucky marched to Corinth, Mississippi, and became the Confederate Army of Mississippi. If Johnston could bring these forces together in time, he could surprise the Yankees and save Tennessee once again.
Confederate forces were pushed out of Missouri the year before, and Johnston was given command of the Trans Mississippi West. The string of reversals convinced Confederate President Jefferson Davis that the disparate Confederate forces in the trans-Mississippi west needed a firm hand and Johnston was given command of the department. A glimmer of hope reinvigorated the Confederates to regain what was lost. But before Johnston could make a positive impact upon the strategic situation, the Confederates lost two key forts, Henry and Donelson, which controlled the Missouri and Tennessee rivers.
Michael was not privy to the grand strategic designs of Johnston and his staff, but the rank and file knew that a battle was brewing and that they were going to “surprise the Yanks in their beds” on the morrow. The Texans were up before dawn and on the move all day. The troops had been told to observe strict noise discipline, but with thousands of men, some were bound to have lapses in judgment.
As the rain gave way to clear skies, many infantryman decided it would be a good idea to test their powder. The sight and sound of men discharging their muskets made the march seem like a holiday parade or celebration. Michael had to laugh as he watched staff officers riding to and fro along the columns yelling at the tops of their lungs for the men to “stop that infernal noise!” As soon as an officer got the men in line at one point, firing erupted farther ahead or behind, causing another paroxysm of rage and cursing from the staff. Despite the racket, they had not seen any enemy.
The Texans considered themselves luckier than most artillery regiments when they marched off to the war, resplendent with their six twelve-pound Napoleon cannon. With its ability to send a twelve-pound, solid shot 1,800 yards, the Napoleon was a prize. They came compliments of the United States government, collected from several outposts manned by U.S. army units throughout Texas before the war. Being well-supplied with the Napoleons made them the mainstay of the divisional artillery, or so they thought.
When they had arrived in Corinth with the rest of the forces from Arkansas, they were shocked to find themselves reassigned. They were placed under the command of Captain Marshall T. Polk and were to support the movements of the newly formed 2nd Brigade under Bushrod R. Johnson. With the reorganization Johnston initiated came the second shock. The 20th Texas Light Artillery lost its designation. In line with the Confederate artillery’s penchant for referring to batteries by their commanders, they became known as Polk’s battery. The original battery was broken up, and the Napoleons were farmed out to other organizations. Two sections of the 20th were then combined with a battery from Tennessee, Polk’s own command. Though initially this hurt the Texans’ pride, they soon got on with the business of making war and drilling under the watchful eye of Captain Polk.
*****
Squinting wearily as the sun found a hole in the cloud cover and bathed the soldiers in warmth and brightness, Michael stared up the road at the long and seemingly endless column trudging forward. Somewhere up that same road lay the enemy camp at Pittsburg Landing. He thought to himself, Do they already know of our approach? Had they heard all this ruckus? Will we carry the day? Surprise was essential.
The Union army settled into camp at Pittsburg Landing to await the arrival of several of its disparate parts before moving on Corinth, Mississippi, and completing the cleansing of Tennessee of Rebel presence. Rumor had it that another army was moving slowly from Kentucky to merge with the force at the Landing. They needed more speed, but so far as he could see, speed was only a dream as the near constant rain turned the Tennessee roads into mush and slowed the march to a crawl. He looked toward the sun burning away the clouds. Maybe it was a good omen.
A voice called to him, “Captain Grierson.”
“Sir?” Michael shook himself from his reverie as Captain Marshall Polk moved his horse alongside.
“When we get to Michie’s Tavern, move the battery off the road somewhere and bed for the night,” Polk told him. “We’re to wait for Bragg’s Corps to move past us before moving on again into line of battle. Maintain strict noise discipline, no fires, and have the men ready to move at 0200.”
“Yes, sir.” Michael said curtly. “Should I have the men brew something at the first opportunity, then?”
“With the pace we are keeping, I doubt they will get the chance, but you may try.”
“I’ll tell Mahoney to have the men ready for march at 0200 tomorrow.” Just before Polk could leave, Michael asked him in a whisper, “Hey, Marsh, do you think we’re gonna pull this off? What’s the latest talk at headquarters?”
Polk looked in the direction the column was moving. “Well, I can’t see how the Yanks don’t know something is up with all the noise an army this size makes. Michie’s is supposed to be two miles or so from our form-up point, and from there it’s only three more miles to the enemy encampment. It’s kind of eerie, ya’ know,” Marshall Polk said. He took off his hat and scratched his head, revealing greasy, sweat-matted auburn hair. “I’d almost rather that the enemy knew we were here.”
“What?” Michael said loudly, looking at Marshall. In a quieter tone, he asked, “What are you meaning?”
“It’s the tension. Every noise, every idiot infantryman what decides to test his wet powder or carry on as he’d just seen the paymaster means the tension gets rougher. You know this whole thing is bent on surprise.” Polk waved his hand to indicate the men marching forward. “Well, if we know that they know we are here, then all we have to do is make up our minds to attack or go home. But as it is, we creep forward, not knowin’ if the slightest rustle of the leaves is going to bring a heap of cavalry upon us or if we’re going to march into an open field to find the whole enemy host arrayed for battle.” He paused for a moment and examined the pommel of this saddle. “I’d rather we knew what we were getting into than have this game of cat and mouse.”